Tag: Richard Widmark
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Crime tourists, Part I: Yanks behaving badly in foreign lands
Orson Welles, ‘The Third Man’ (1949). By Paul Parcellin Film noir loves morally sketchy locales — the kind of places where law and order is on life support and police can be manipulated like a vending machine. Like America’s Wild West, post-war Europe and Asia’s rubble strewn roadways were a magnet for drifters, bootleggers, grifters…
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New York noir: 20 films that explore the big city’s dark corners
John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, ‘Force of Evil’ (1948). It might not come as news to you that noirs set in New York City look a lot different from the ones taking place in Los Angeles. The City of Angels is a sun bleached sprawl of low buildings between the ocean and desert. New York is…
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Live it up! 11 essential nightclubs of noir
Karen Morley, ‘Scarface’ (1932) In noir, nightclubs are smokey hideaways where criminality thrives under moody lighting. Ritzier than typical barrooms, they are havens for hedonists and the racketeer elite. Crucial to these nightspots are floorshows. A chanteuse may whisper a torch song designed to torment an ex-lover sitting ringside. Her words spell out jagged details…
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Mark Stevens: his quartet of searing films noir still light up screens today
Lucille Ball, Mark Stevens, ‘The Dark Corner’ (1946). By Paul Parcellin Mark Stevens made a string of taut crime dramas in the 1940s and ’50s that still resonate today. He acted in dozens of films, from westerns, war pictures to musicals and comedies, and directed two of his self-produced noirs as well as some hardboiled…